Ore mountains - region and history: Difference between revisions

[[File:Krusne hory CZ I3A-2.png|200px|thumb|right|Krusne hory CZ I3A-2]]

[[File:Altenberg Panorama (04) 2006-10-30.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Altenberg Panorama (04) 2006-10-30]]  

==Geological history of the region==

The landscape of Northwestern Bohemia, with its Ore Mountains, Sokolov and North Bohemian coal basins, Central Bohemian Uplands and Egerland, is the result of millions of years of orogenetic processes. The Ore Mountains crystalline complex was formed during the Hercynian orogeny at the turn of the early Palaeozoic, when older rocks of various ages and origins were affected by metamorphic processes. They were, roughly speaking, sediments saturated with deep magmatic rocks, and deep magmatic rocks themselves. Depending on the nature of the original rocks and the intensity of the metamorphic processes, they were turned into orthogneisses, paragneisses, crystalline slates, crystalline limestones, schists, and phyllites. As part of the Bohemian Massif, the Ore Mountains crystalline complex belonged to the Hercynian European mountain system. The massif sank repeatedly and was lifted again in the Mesozoic. The associated erosion and accumulation processes fashioned it into a levelled peneplain by the end of the Mesozoic; its sheet was broken at the edges by the Saxon orogeny in the early Tertiary. The elevated plain of the Ore Mountains and the rift valley below it were formed at the northwestern breach of the Bohemian Massif; it was filled with lake sediments, containing brown coal seams in their older strata, in the course of the Tertiary. The deposition of massive layers of dead organic matter from the tropical vegetation of that era is probably linked to the repeated disastrous effects of volcanoes in the emerging Central Bohemian Uplands and Doupov Mountains. The landscape was then completed by the alteration of colder and warmer periods, effects of water, vegetation, and evolution of plant and animal species since the beginning of the Quaternary. The contribution of human activity to the landscape formation can only be recognized in the last millennium.<ref name = Riha>Říha,M., Stoklasa, J., Lafarová, M., Dejmal, I., Marek, J., Pakosta, P., Beránek, K. Environmental mining limits in North Bohemian Lignite Region. Společnost pro krajinu, Praha 2005. Translation: Petr Kurfurst. Updated for the ISPoS summer school in September, 2011</ref>

==Prehistory==

The territory of the North Bohemian Basin has been populated since the end of the Palaeolithic, the Magdalenian period in the 8th millennium before Common Era (BCE). One of the most significant residential sites of that era has been found by erstwhile Lake Komořany, the Neolithic linear ceramic excavation near Ervěnice, dating from the 6th millennium BCE (already a farming culture), and the site of a subsequent pricked ceramic culture in Chabařovice from the 5th millennium BCE. All of them have been removed due to coal mining (along with the overburden of the coal seam).

== Mining in the Middle Ages ==

[[File:FG Reiche Zeche (09) 2006-11-08.jpg|200px|thumb|left|FG Reiche Zeche (09) 2006-11-08]]

Mining towns, not “naturally” evolved but “artificially” established, are a special phenomenon typical of the Ore Mountains and the land below them. They were founded by locators at the turn of the Middle Ages, after the local wealth of natural resources (metallic ores, semiprecious stones, arsenic, etc.) was discovered and first exploited.  

==Natural potential utilized: curative spas==

The beautiful and variegated landscape went hand in hand with rich cultural heritage – heritage of towns and villages, numerous castles and chateaux, monasteries, churches, parks and arboreta, and lakes – in consequence both the extent and quality of the settlements and the economic development of the region increased. When residual manifestations of volcanic activity through numerous thermal and mineralized springs and spouts were discovered, another type of settlements typical of this region emerged: curative spas. They further increased the variety in the landscape character and exploitation of the natural resources. This was accompanied by the specific architecture and building types: spa houses, buildings for temporary guest accommodation, colonnades and promenades, gyms and casinos, open-air theatres, theatres and concert halls, riding schools, park gazebos, maintained walking paths with vistas and resting facilities, and landscaped compositions of spa town surroundings.<ref name = Riha></ref>

==Communist heavy industry base==

[[File:Lom Jiri 20070924.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Lom Jiri 20070924]]

The communist regime, established in 1948, made a cunning use of the people’s disappointment with the Western allies at the Conference of Munich, the anti-German nationalist feelings and its ideology to carry on the psychosis of fear and enmity towards the West and bind Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union. The Ore Mountains and the basin below became an unprecedentedly cheap source of uranium, coal and power for the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia’s national economy, renowned in the First Republic for its balanced proportion of heavy metallurgical, chemical and engineering industries with the light and processing industries and a high rate of valuation of input raw materials, became the “forge of the socialist camp” with a dominance of metallurgical and other raw material and energy-intensive heavy industries. This orientation severely harmed all of Czechoslovakia’s national economy, devastated certain regions of the country and was most abominably manifested in the Sokolov-Cheb and North Bohemian Basins. Vast tracts of the landscape, spanning hundreds of square kilometres, were devastated due to opencast coal mining and sinking of underground mines, extraction of kaolin, gravel, sand, ceramic clays and construction stone, erection of gigantic power plants, power and heat distribution systems and repositories of power plant fly ash. The landscape character with the round hillsides and plateaux of the Ore Mountains, covered with forests and peat bogs, both the basins with fertile farmland and clear watercourses, preserved in a harmonious form until the World War, was transformed into an “industrial landscape” filled with new land formations due to shifting millions of cubic metres of rock and earth, industrial and storage buildings, deposits and dumps. The dense network of linear transport and technical infrastructures cut the once continuous country into fragments difficult to access and manage, upset its harmony, liveability and passability for both game and people. Natural plant societies disappeared, replaced by weeded patches and invasive non-native plant and animal species. Towns and villages where tens of thousands of people once lived were wiped out, along with thousands of cultural and natural heritage sites wiped out due to coal mining and the power plants fuelled by the extracted brown coal - to be precise, 106 municipalities, including the 650 year old royal city of Most were eliminated this way <ref name = Riha></ref>(see [http://www.zanikleobce.cz/index.php? Exctinct villages]).

Chabařovice near Ústí nad Labem has managed to oppose its fate successfully, unlike Libkovice. The position of its self-government was supported by the public and political representatives of Ústí nad Labem municipality and district, which allowed the Government, under the situation, to pass – without political friction – a first resolution defining binding territorial ecological limits beyond which neither the mining nor its adverse environmental impacts were permitted. That was the turning point but it has not been permanent. The struggle continues 20 years later.<ref name = Riha></ref>

==Recent situation==

The cultural attachment to the natural and cultural heritage was wiped out of most of the people for two generations. Only the younger generations today have sunk their roots in the region, and their newly gained attachment to their homes empowers their will to save the remains of the inherited values and remedy at least some of the past harm. The last demolished village, Libkovice, admittedly succumbed to the dynamics of the “running engine” of the mines, but it was Libkovice where the organized opposition to the continuation of the current practice first gained life and voice. Locals got the courage to make themselves heard and oppose the property purchases at ridiculous officially assessed prices, which would not even allow them to buy a substitute flat in a prefab block, not to mention a house. They were joined by environmental activists from elsewhere and a considerable media coverage of the case was achieved for the first time. The Libkovice case provoked a debate on other, more considerate mining methods that make it possible to preserve the landscape with its historic and living values.<ref name = Riha></ref>